


Tiny Dancer

by trashemdudes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Relationship Study, where are will's dogs during this? idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 04:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8474992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashemdudes/pseuds/trashemdudes
Summary: Right after the Verger house when Will wakes up at home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Named after Elton John's Tiny Dancer.

“I had a dream last night.”

Hannibal had his hands clasped on his lap, sitting across from Will. The images flickered from Will’s house in Wolf Trap, the little kitchen’s stains on the cabinets and counter across from his bed and cracked paint on his door, to Hannibal’s neatly polished office.

“And what happened in this dream?”

“I slit my throat,” Will said. “Or at least I tried to.”

“Why did you only try?”

Will stared Hannibal down, his expression tired, bored. His eyes flickered away before his face distorted into a facsimile of a smile, “I was...scared.” His voice was low and slow. “I wanted it, didn’t want it. I ended up escaping, my blood leaving a trail. It was bright red like pomegranates, rubies but instead of really seeing or smelling it, I could taste it. Couldn’t feel it on my tongue, but I could taste it, and it was sweet, fresh and beguiling.”

Hannibal leaned just the slightest bit closer, unconsciously, and Will’s eyes flickered to his hands. His book had been placed to the side a while ago. He knew without looking at Hannibal, the exact expression on his face and how he longed to entangle his fingers with Will’s and to use his other hand to touch the stubble on his jaw and kiss him. His design.

One of the only ones that didn’t involve murder.

Or at least not in the physical sense.

“And what were you running from?”

“You’re not my psychiatrist,” Will replied, sharp and irritated. He felt a sudden longing for something he didn’t have. For Alana and kisses and a soft warm body that smelled familiar, like home. The flickering of firelight, his lighthouse within a home. For his wood and river and isolation and peace.

“No. I am not. We are just having a conversation,” Hannibal said in turn, reminiscent.

“Change,” Will finally answered after a pause, his eyes turning dull, his mind climbing over walls and scraping his knees and hands, his lungs burning in the icy air even as he knew that it would all be worth it, getting yelled at, the cold and cuts, if he could just see the sunrise. He had once considered repeating to Hannibal exactly what the man had said to him after gutting him like one of Will’s fish, leaving Will flopping, gasping, reaching for the world he knew.

They had made each other _choose_.

I gave you a rare gift, but you didn’t want it. I trusted you with my mind, with what I didn’t trust Alana or Jack with, and you stole from me what little I had with Jack, and what I had with Beverly, Alana, Abigail - you took me too, silently, swiftly, efficiently. Never gave me back.

You betrayed me first, Hannibal.

“Did it ever occur to you that I could be Humpty Dumpty?” Will asked Hannibal. “What if I didn’t put myself back together? Would you have swept my shards up and thrown me away? Or did you want my edges sharp and scattered?”

“You are no egghead,” Hannibal said very seriously.

And Will laughed at that, full force, his face and body aching under the strain. Hannibal seemed amused, content, happy at Will’s own sharp happiness.

“No, no. No, I’m not,” Will said after his silent, shaking outburst.

Then, “I confess my deflection. I did not answer your question. In response, I enjoy many forms of art. If any other person,” Hannibal said, “shattered at my touch -” _Randall Tier. Neal Frank. Franklin Froideveaux. Bella Crawford. Beverly Katz. Margot Verger. Alana Bloom._ Will chanted the names in his head in an unending stream. “- it was done with the intention to see the pieces they would break into, and yet-”

“You wanted them to resist. To make it more interesting.” Will cut in. _Rude_ , he thought, thinking it for Hannibal. “I guess I made it a little too interesting.”

“You are riveting,” Hannibal said simply. “Kintsugi,” he added as an afterthought.

Will shook his head, his curls, too long, brushing against his cheekbones, but didn’t move any other part of his body. His bones ached, made from sugar, brittle; his body felt soft and rotting like overripe fruit, flies buzzing above, a dizzying crown.

“Hannibal,” Will finally said, his voice low and rough and pleading. Calculated pauses, purposefully desperate voices, confused minds. Meat that would taste acidic if it was cooked, plated and eaten.

Will looked up to find the exact expression he had been expecting on Hannibal’s face. Sharp, calculating eyes warring with desire, delight, and curiosity.

 _Finally_ , Hannibal’s eyes seemed to say.

He'd been waiting for Will to _move_. He didn't care for the consequences.

Will knew physical wounds had never fazed the man, had no influence on his moods or decisions. He saw bodies as just flesh, meat, a tool.

So he would take from Hannibal the only thing he valued. Dangle it again with sharp bloodied teeth, a feral, focused demeanor and soft kisses. Then he would steal it away again.

Will took his rotting flesh and grabbed Hannibal’s collar, thoughts of strangulation, of making it _personal_ as the man deserved, flickering across his beautiful brain. How good it would have tasted, how he would have taken him apart into pieces, wasting not even a single bit, honoring him, keeping him, locking him away where a place was made for him. Inside Hannibal.

Their lips were pressed together. Gentle and sweet and surely how Hannibal would have kissed Alana, all soft, fond smiles.

No. 

This was his. This was Will's.

Will pressed harder.

Teeth scraped against lips, nails dug into skin.

Blood, fresh.

Will made it hurt, pulling at hair, until Hannibal looked perfectly debauched. Raked his nails down his back, his arms, biting his shoulder, shoving, pushing pulling ripping screaming shaking crying hiding.

That dreaded music of a strange echoing beat.

“You know, Will,” Hannibal grit out between panting breaths and brutal thrusts that shifted his loose strands of hair, “you chose me a very long time ago.” As I did you.

Will shook his head just the tiniest bit in acknowledgement - a reflexive jerk of his muscles more than anything. He was gasping with each thrust, begging for the water where he belonged. Fins and silvery scales. The water he begged for welled up in his eyes, but never reached his lips so he could breathe,

“Do you remember when it was?”

He closed his eyes, the tide receding, letting each thrust rock him back and forth.

He was standing on a boat this time, fishing. It wasn’t anything like fishing in a stream, feeling the cold of the water seep into his legs, of being completely immersed in nature. It was distant, wavering, and he was still trapped in the confines of civilization’s demands.

“Yes,” Will said, his face contorting as he shook.

“That was how I knew I could take her.”

Without being _rude,_ Will added. Hannibal had known what Alana had meant to him, could have meant, and he had completed turning her from Will. Politely.

“You took her from me. You made me push her away.”

“I did not, Will. You did that.”

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I would not disrespect you like that, Will. Open your eyes.”

Will opened them.

“You knew the consequences of your actions. You cannot plead innocence.”

“I thought I would be exonerated.”

“Not with innocence, you did not.”

“I knew,” Will said with all the force he could manage, trembling with fury and fear and everything in between, “you wouldn’t leave me in there.”

‘No,” Hannibal said, closing his eyes and pressing a kiss to his forehead, “no, not in such a place. My teacup deserves to be used, not locked away.”

Will choked on a laugh, “For what, Dr. Lecter.”

They both knew the answer.

“You deny yourself power.” Hannibal’s coal black eyes stared at him with chiding fondness.

Will smiled faintly, grimaced really.

Not when I’m with you.

But why did power feel so fragile and slippery and exhilarating?

Then Will closed his eyes, reeling the fishing line, muscles aching at the cautious, curious fish. He tilted his head back breathing in the scent of a storm, distant. The sky was grey, sharp contrasts of navy grey melding with blinding white and the darkness that loomed with those weighty clouds.

.................................................................

 

Will stared at Hannibal’s back. Even now, it was easier not to look at his eyes. Simpler. Even when they weren’t open.

He was...awake, but with his eyes closed.

Will looked at his broad shoulders and the curve of the muscles, sloping in and then out, at and between his shoulder blades. The slight expansion following his breath.

Hannibal had tried to remake him because he had needed him. He hadn’t realized what he had needed, had only followed his instincts, his curiosity, prodding.

“I just needed this from you. To know. Now, I know,” Will confessed with a smile.

Hannibal’s back was still.

“I don’t need you anymore. Don’t want you. I’m done with this game of cat and mouse, Hannibal.”

Will turned away from Hannibal onto his other side to stare at the dim moonlight scattered over his kitchen’s discolored cabinets and stained, chipped counters. The sheets shifted at his movement, pulled taut between them, and Hannibal was silent.

.................................................................

 

Will closed his eyes, and then he opened them to the weak sunlight filtering in. He sat up slowly and carefully like he’d been wounded, and the blanket slid lower, revealing his bare chest covered in bites and bruises. He didn’t look at them. He swung his legs over, and they touched the ground, flat. He grabbed his shirt and slowly buttoned up, closing his eyes because funny enough, Abigail was next to him smiling.

Will didn’t think he’d seen a smile sweeter than hers before. Not even Alana’s could compare. Abigail’s were sweet and sincere, all her facial features lighting up, eyes crinkling at the corners, innocent and young and vulnerable.

Will had never seen her smile like that when he had been with her, but he was sure she had before, once upon a time, and he was lucky enough to have the imagination to see it, touch the stretched muscles and grooves of the skin on her pretty, pale, young face.

Will glanced back at the empty half of the bed, now cold, and stood up, walking over to his phone and calling Jack.

.................................................................

 

The FBI arrived, shiny lights and all, and Hannibal walked out from behind the house. Will wondered distantly, as he watched the man surrender himself, eyes never leaving Will’s and Will’s seeing beyond him, through him, if perhaps he had gone to see the shed, the remains of Randall Tier and beautiful lies left in shreds.

Will didn’t smile even as he felt the FBI’s fear, disbelief, confusion, smug victory. Jack’s triumph that his bait had worked.

“I forgive you,” Will said softly. _Suffer,_ and all will be forgiven.

 

 

 

_Hold me closer tiny dancer._

  
_Count the headlights on the highway._

  
_Lay me down in sheets of linen._

  
_You had a busy day today._

 

_Didn't you, Will?_

**Author's Note:**

> Kintsugi, also known as Kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
> 
> Sorry if this is weird, but I can never tell if someone wants a reply to their comment or not. So if you do comment, and want a response, put an @ at the beginning!


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